Weather: Drizzly; mild & very claggy on the tops
Where: Borrowdale, Lake District
It was a grey & overcast morning on Wednesday, the recent spell of settled weather had clearly ended maybe a day earlier than initially forecast and a day's scrambling in the high fells was replaced with a morning visit to Hause (Honister) Gill - somewhere I've seen & passed by many times without ever getting my feet wet and Cat Gill - a venue I've used several times but Alan had never visited.
The initial section from the small road bridge is very much as described in the guide book (see below) - as a boulder hop. In fact this continues in pleasant verdant surroundings for quite a while. However, once through a short series of cascades there are several falls that can be negotiated, all relatively straightforwardly. One or two traverses would lead to a wet outing if a fall was to result & the scrambles alongside the falls are good fun. At no point did we feel the need to get a rope out, the scramble very much fits its Grade 1 description.
The falls & cascades continue for some distance, at no point is egress to the road difficult. The option of sticking with the rock & close to the water at just about all times is possible at this venue. We chose to exit the gill a little short of the cattle grid on the Honister Pass.
A Note on Kit:
We also visited Cat Gill which I've written about several times on these pages
I'd say that cat Gill is a far "greasier" and more slippy environment than Hause Gill, so for the first time this morning I used approach shoes & followed the old advice of taking a pair of woolly socks to wear over the shoes when scrambling on slippery surfaces. As a first impression this worked extremely well with, in particular, the last fall on Cat Gill proving to be a far easier undertaking than on previous visits.
Hause Gill (Scramble 50, page 144) &
Cat Gill (Scramble 44, page 133)
Are described in the Cicerone Guide:
Scrambles in the Lake District
Volume 2: Northern Lakes
By Brian Evans
If you'd like a copy of this book please c
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